


The Case for Secret Santa

by Precari



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, F/M, Inspired by The Night Before Christmas, Modern Era, Secret Santa, kinda taang, they're pretty much the same age as canon, toph's still blind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:08:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28319478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Precari/pseuds/Precari
Summary: Toph and Aang have a little heated discussion about Secret Santa and then have one about what they mean to each other...
Relationships: Aang & Toph Beifong, Aang/Toph Beifong
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	The Case for Secret Santa

Twas the night before Christmas, when nothing but chaos and cacophonic children envelop one town.

Two children, however, are anything but sleep bound. 

As the night dissolves into morning,

One child wrestles with gift adorning,

and the other...covers herself with a coat of popcorn.

Oh dear, let's start the story before this poem becomes wacky and airborne.

~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~

By five minutes before midnight, Toph had spent her Christmas Eve lazing around the couch and listening to Home Alone for the fifth time in the row. During that time, Toph found it a good idea to hone her abilities in catching popcorn with her mouth. Her blind eyes did not appreciate the sentiment, however, after being dabbed with popcorn butter 435 times out of 450 total tosses. Alas, it was the price of breaking Toph’s previous mouth-catching-popcorn-kernel record, which was 0.

Sitting cross legged on the floor was Aang, who was partly paying attention to the movie while taping random bits of various sheets of wrapping paper to his gift.

After staring at the TV screen for a brief three minutes, Aang had turned his head back to his gift-wrapping just before a dumber than fiction robber left his head to burn from a hanging blowtorch.

“Ahhhhhhhh!” 

While Aang jumped up five feet from the scream, Toph simply guffawed until she couldn't breathe. 

Once Aang came down to Earth, Aang faced Toph and cocked his head, frowning. 

“How can you even stand watching anyone, even robbers, getting tortured? Doesn’t this make you kind of sad?”

Toph rolled her eyes. “Of course you would say that. Aang, the torturer is an eight year old boy who could easily be choked to death by two grown men. That’s why hearing their screams of pain is funny in itse-”

Aang let out a rare, indecipherable yell just then.

“How do you even wrap this stupid, weirdly shaped thing!” 

Aang shoved the object with his foot and crossed his arms. 

Meanwhile, Toph developed a weird sparkle in her eye and grinned.

“And that is why I don’t call you Twinkle Thumbs.”

“Not now, Toph.”

Toph cleared her throat before continuing.

"Aang, are you ready to back me up on the greatest battle of our LIVES yet?” 

Aang raised his eyebrows before mock-stroking his chin. “What is this ‘battle’ you speak of?”

Toph leaned in forward and forward before falling out with the couch. She lifted her head a bit off the floor to speak.

“How ‘bout we cancel Secret Santa?"

“What? Why?”

“I don’t pick the battles, Twinkle Toes. The battles choose us.”

“I mean you’re not wrong, but this is Secret Santa. It’s super fun! It’s like we’re Santa, and Santa is pretty cool.“

“Santa is pretty dumb. Last year I asked for a fight with DAH BOULDER but he got me dresses instead. You’d think it was my mom who gave me those.”

“But you don’t have to like Santa to like Secret Santa. Like you can pretend you’re undermining the real Santa by being a better Santa to others.”

“That’s one of the few good ideas you’ve had this evening. ”

“Awesome! Toph, I’m so glad we-”

“But like instead of pretending to be Santa, we can pretend to be Melon Lord! Or, in this case,  _ Winter  _ Melon Lord.” 

“Melon Lord?”

“Yup! We can sabotage some of these gifts, starting with this Secret Santa and blame the damage on Santa. With these disappointed kids, we will have just enough employees to branch out towards other local Secret Santas and then branch out to regionals, semi-regionals, semi-nationals, nationals, and then all around the world. Soon we’ll be an entire corporation. Mwahahaha!”

“How about we discard the whole Melon Lord thing and just focus on the real meaning of Secret Santa?”

“There’s a ‘real meaning’ to it?”

“Of course, Toph. Secret Santa is more than a game. It is a game that we use to express our love for our friends and our family without gift-receiver people knowing our name. And even if we mess up the gifts, the best gift of all is just having fun and spending time with the bestest people you know. And that really is the true meaning of Christmas.”

“...Still stupid.”

It was at this point Aang exploded. 

“What is so wrong with Secret Santa!” Aang gesticulated his frustration through throwing his arms up and down. “I understand you don’t like it, and that’s fine! But why do you have to ruin it for the people who do!”

“I’m tired of not being able to participate in Secret Santa or any of these things! It’s always this time of year that people spout the whole ‘help the less fortunate’ shtick. And when they do, I can feel everyone looking at me like some charity case. It's like everyone is obligated to feel sorry for me. I mean, it’s nice being thrown money at you while walking on the street, but sometimes I just want to be able to do whatever you were doing this evening, you know!”

After her rant, Toph leaned back on the bottom of the couch in exhaustion.

Aang stepped towards her.

“Toph, I don’t feel sorry for you. In fact you’re like the most capable person I know.”

Toph scoffed, but her eyes softened. “Whatever.” 

“No, really! You’re like my hero!”

After a rough sleigh ride of silence, Aang spoke up.

“Well, I was going to wait until later to give this to you, but I wasn’t able to wrap this anyways so...” 

He grabbed his gift and walked towards her, suddenly breaking out in buckets of sweat.

He then kneeled down and fastened the throat mic on her. Toph reached for it instinctively and found the button to turn it on. 

"My gift grants you the power to scream at our faces like the Boulder

"That's stupid," blurted Toph. Her eyes, however, sparkled once again.

She hugged Aang. Once they disconnected, she cupped his chin and kissed him on the cheek. He blushed. 

"Thank you,” said Toph. “So are we cool again?”

Aang smiled. “We are.”

“By the way…” Toph began to smirk, “AHHHHHHHHHHHHH...”

It took six hours until Aang’s eardrums exploded.

  
  


~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~

In the morning after,

Their friends arrived with gifts and laughter.

With the help of her friends Sokka and Katara,

Toph kept her gift to Aang a secret: a wonderful dog named Appa.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed!   
> Please feel free to give me constructive criticism. I apologize if this wasn't good; I was rushing to finish this before Christmas was over. Anything helps!  
> If you guess what the title was based on, you get ...uh...bragging rights! :D


End file.
